


Redeeming Features

by greywash



Series: Spring Break Creative Calisthenics [4]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes (Downey films)
Genre: Adventure, M/M, Spring Break Creative Calisthenics, They see me trollin'
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-23
Updated: 2016-03-23
Packaged: 2018-05-28 12:51:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6329944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greywash/pseuds/greywash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Really,” Holmes says, “it isn’t as though it were my fault”; and Watson buries his head in his hands.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Redeeming Features

**Author's Note:**

> Over spring break, [I am asking for some prompts on Tumblr](http://fizzygins.tumblr.com/post/141318279512/okay-so-i-have-been-having-an-awful-time-with) to help me shake out the writerly cobwebs. 
> 
> [imnova](http://imnova.tumblr.com/) requested: "Sooo.. I read about your request for prompts. How about Soulmates, hopefully in any Sherlock Holmes verse you want? BBC, Ritchie, ACD, I am not picky. Thank you so very much if you will write this." 
> 
> Wait, what was it that you said there? What was the prompt again? I’m not sure, I didn’t totally hear you, but I _think_ I got it right…

“Really,” Holmes says, “it isn’t as though it were my fault”; and Watson buries his head in his hands.

After a moment, he mutters, “I’m tempted to contradict you,” looking up with some reluctance, “but I know—”

Holmes straightens on the edge of the pallet opposite, scraping his overlong scraggly hair back as he says, “Let us review the evidence, shall we?”

“—that that’ll just give you more fuel for the fire, oh, why yes,” Watson snaps, “ _let’s,_ do, _please_ let us review how we came to find ourselves in Cologne, conveniently liberated of—”

“If the Archduke had not changed his travel arrangements at the last minute—”

“—your wallet, my luggage, all our funds, and that _godforsaken_ ruby—”

“—we would’ve been perfectly safe on the train from Frankfurt,” Holmes says, “and buck up, mother hen, the ruby’s on its way home to Sicily as we speak.”

“How,” Watson says tightly, “can you possibly know that—and _don’t_ say you have your methods—”

“But I do have my methods, my dear,” Holmes says; and Watson says, “—or I shall have to do something drastic,” and then drops his head back against the wall.

It’s stone. Quite study. Makes a good, solid sort of a _thump_ when he does it, so he does it again: _thump_. _Thump_. _Thump_. The edge of the wood board under his bunk is cutting into the backs of his thighs.

“Come, now,” Holmes says, “I took the precaution of writing to Miss Adler, before we left Stuttgart, and it’s surely not so bad as all that, I think,” much closer, “to have me owe you an apology”; and Watson jerks his head up, flushing, because Holmes has crawled over to John’s hard bunk on all fours.

“Is it?” Sherlock murmurs, in full and obvious anticipation of confirmation: he pulls himself halfway up, and then rests his chin on John’s knee.

“You’re a despicable person,” John says, in reply, “and I loathe you”; to which Sherlock gives a terrifically self-satisfied roguish grin, most likely because of the unbidden polar trajectories already assumed by John’s damp-backed knees.

“Sicily, is it,” John remarks, quite some time later. His fingers are still tangled up in Sherlock’s unwashed hair; he ought to remove them, most likely, but can’t quite seem to be bothered to do so.

“Mm,” Sherlock agrees, rubbing his stubbled mouth across John’s collarbone, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. 

John nods, hair scraping the hard, odiferous mattress beneath them. “And Miss Adler is due to be arriving…”

“By my calculations,” Sherlock says, “some time tomorrow.”

The statement emerges somewhat muffled. Warm. John permits his palm to skim down the back of Sherlock’s neck, dip into his shirt’s perpetually listing-open collar, to which he does not seem notably more inclined in their sitting room than he is in parts abroad, and which gives him a disreputable, vaguely piratical air. Watson, of course, finds this _dishabille_ quite shocking.

“You know,” John tells him thoughtfully, “there was a period in my life, before I met you, when I spent hardly any time in prison at all.”

“How tedious.” Sherlock lifts his face. Still red, a little sweaty. “You must confess, though, I think,” he says, straightening up enough to refasten his shirtfront at two gaping, listing points alone, “that I have my redeeming features as a cellmate,” and John undoes Sherlock’s buttons, then does them up again, aligned correctly this time. 

“Well,” John says, as Sherlock leans in. “One or two.”


End file.
